Mandala: Locus of Thought, isan exhibition exploringthe Mandala’s elemental form and union of seemingly irreconcilable binaries as a guide for parallel systems of reasoning.

An ancient symbol of the universe, the mandala is a visual aid to the transformative process of meditation, depicting a synthesized physical and metaphysical ideal. This exhibition explores the duality of the mandala as a locus--both a locality and an abstract center of power--through the work of fifteen contemporary NYC-based artists. These artists employ familiar geometry and architectural elements to represent intangible concepts, reaching towards the absolute with a vocabulary of earthly equivalents.

Arlene Shechet’s Flow Blue series is a centerpiece of this exhibition. These cobalt-colored drawings in paper reference blueprints of Buddhist stupas,collapsing the architectural lifespan from origin to ruin in the map of the mandala.

The shape of the Buddhist monument proliferates in Brian Bulfer’s Sacred Exchange; trails of stupa silhouettes are silkscreened over a concentric, mandala-like reflected image of a Thai storefront stocked with religious commodities. Drawing from the powerful symbolism of Tantric imagery to create a hybrid iconography, Stephen Mueller’s jewel-hued abstractions oscillate between broad planes of color and geometric volumes in the digital lexicon of gradients. Chromatic vibration attains physical presence in Fabienne Lasserre’s Are. Matt Jones’ cosmological tondo paintings are simultaneously dense with matter and portals to an infinite void.

Diving into parallel realities steeped in Hindu myth, Prithi Gowda’s film Televisnu follows a young woman’s odyssey through her own psychic landscape. Chuck Webster brings a signature palimpsestic application of paint to avisual language of metaphors at once recognizable and ambiguous, figurative and architectural.